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Big speakers, are they really the best way to get great sound?

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to listen to some very large speakers that are considered to be at, or close to, the pinnacle in speaker design and ability. Needless to say, the speakers retail in the mid to high $300k range. These speakers, and I will not be naming them, were sourced by about $800k of upstream gear. Room size was about thirty by twenty, maybe a little larger.
To say the the overall sound was BIG would be accurate, but also I noticed something else, that I typically hear with big speaker systems. Generally, the speakers were right on edge of overloading the room, depending on music, the dreaded bass boom could be heard. But, the whole presentation was greater in impact than most any smaller speaker system, yet it was almost unlistenable for the long term.

The question I asked myself, is do we really want this type of presentation in our home audio systems? The speakers threw a pretty large soundstage, but also made things sound somewhat larger than life. I also thought that this type of speaker is akin to the large box dynamic speakers of yesteryear. For example, a set of large horns from Altec Lansing or similar was reminiscent of this sound. Makes me believe that if one has a big room, a similar sound can be obtained from most any large speaker system and at a fraction of the price.

I listen in a very small room, and by necessity in the near field, yet I think the overall intimacy of this type of listening experience is better for me, your thoughts?

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retrocrownfan
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Interesting discussion. It makes sense that a music listener who enjoys non amplified acoustic recordings is looking for a different set of attributes in their speakers than those who enjoy hearing performances on amplified instruments.

Having been on stage watching Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeshi’s road crew set up I found it fascinating that there is significant effort put into having the musicians hear each other’s performances as “point sources” rather than depending entirely on stage mixed monitor sound. Even though much of the music came from Fender Twin Reverbs and B-3 Leslie type speakers, their stadium volume performance had wide dynamic range…during their show, hanging on stage rail outdoors at DelFest I remember being impressed how they could play so loud softly at times :)

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